Different from You: Reversal
by Traitor of All Traitors
Summary: Another take on the idea of how different one can be from another person. What if the majority of your differences weren't just based upon your beliefs? What if you weren't viewed as you were in one other life? Cracked mirror, warped mirror? A different Shinji with a damaged past far more extreme.
1. Reversal

Creation began on 05-22-16

Creation ended on 05-23-16

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Different from You: Reversal

A/N: Due to a response from _bladewolfzic_ , this is another variation of the _Different from You_ story. I must warn you, though, this is as different as it can get in this version.

"…It's not my fault you slept in, Misato," went Ritsuko over the phone as the purple-haired Misato Katsuragi drove down the road to the location of the person she was tasked with picking up.

"Oh, yeah, blame me," Misato responded, turning left on the road. "I had to volunteer because nobody else seemed to want to do it."

"This is the commander's child we're talking about here."

"Yeah. Can't wait to meet him."

"Huh? Misato, did you get the file I had to copy?"

"Yeah, I did. Hold on, I gotta call you back later."

As she hung up, Misato sped up to the train station.

-x-

"…We're sorry," an electronic voice uttered to the person holding a payphone receiver in their left hand, "but the person you're trying to call has a voice mailbox that is currently not in service. Please try again at a later time."

They hung up and sighed. Then, looking away from the payphone, they faced a little boy dressed in a yellow shirt and blue shorts, with ragged, brownish-black hair, dark eyes and a friendly face. The boy turned to face them and merely waved his right hand at them. They sighed and gave a small smile as they waved back.

" _You hate him because the people around you gave you no choice when it came to what happened,"_ they recalled one of their long-ago therapy sessions, _"but you love him because he's yours."_

They continued with that mindset as they approached the little boy and picked him up; he had to be at least three or four years old.

"It looks like we're walking to where we're supposed to be going," they told the boy.

But before they could leave the station, the boy had dropped his toy, a stuffed, angel-winged panda. Before they could even pick it up, the ground started to shake.

"Whoa!" They both gasped, and the ground stopped shaking…but then started shaking again, with more force. "Whoa!"

Something large appeared from behind several buildings, looking like a large, aquatic humanoid with a bird-like face.

"Gah!" The boy screamed, and held on tightly to the person holding him.

Suddenly, a blue Renault showed up, and the passenger side door opened.

"Get in!" A woman with purple hair told them, and they jumped right in.

-x-

The Third Angel was being attacked from all sides by aircraft and tanks, but nothing seemed to stop it from advancing forward, towards an unknown goal. On the monitors displaying it in a secure location, several men in uniform were discussing different strategies on how to best stop it before it could reach its intended goal.

"Nothing's working," a technician informed them.

"Have all units pull out," one of the uniformed men ordered.

-x-

An explosion. A large one that wiped away an entire hillside and many of the buildings around it, even sending out a shockwave of debris that sent the Renault flipping once.

"Ow…" Misato groaned, landing on something soft and squishy beneath her head.

"Get off me!" She heard someone yell at her, and then felt soft impacts of sensation on her face; someone was hitting her. "Get off!"

She got up and looked at the person her, who looked agitated and frightened, panting from the exertion required to get her away.

"I'm sorry…" She started, but was cut off by the sight of the young person in front of her…and the little boy that had been the backseat when they shifted to check on him. "Are you Shinji?"

"Not by choice," the person responded. "It's been my accursed nickname ever since I can remember. My real name is Sakura, but everyone prefers to call me Shinji for some reason."

"You're…you're a girl?"

"Yes. Is that a problem?" The girl, Sakura, or Shinji (due to being addressed as that for some reason), questioned the woman.

Misato was at a loss for words. She had only taken a glimpse at the file containing information on the young woman, and didn't even take the time to evaluate the picture that came with it. And it was quite a deceptive photo, too; the ponytail had been easily hidden behind the head, and the shirt had hidden the delicate curves of the woman's sternum, making it easy to mistake her for a boy. But what didn't make sense was the little boy that was with her; he looked like he could pass for a male version of the girl, only younger and not pretending to be what he wasn't.

"Is it okay for me to talk now, Mommy?" The boy asked, which surprised Misato.

"This…this is…your son?" Misato asked her.

"I don't see how that's any of your business, but, yes, he's mine," Shinji expressed. "Yes, Shado, you can speak now."

"It is nice to meet you," the boy, Shado, expressed to Misato.

-x-

"…If you can beat this thing, Ikari, then the rest are your problem," one of the other men in uniform informed a man in his late-forties, dressed in a dark suit with a red shirt and red-tinted glasses. "Are you even sure your people can handle this?"

"Not to worry," the man, Gendo Ikari, expressed, "this is why NERV exists."

With the military's inability to defeat the Angel, even with an N² Mine attack, the order to deal with the invader fell on the paramilitary's hands.

"So, what happens now?" An older man, in his late-fifties or early-sixties, asked Gendo.

"Prepare to activate Unit-01," Gendo responded.

"But…we have no pilot."

"Not to worry. Another spare is being brought over."

-x-

As they were walking through the halls of the NERV base, Misato, since Shinji was taking the time to read the pamphlet she had given her earlier, read over the girl's file. She to wonder just how damaged the young mother was before even arriving to Tokyo-2 to be picked up.

Apparently, Shinji (whose real name was indeed Sakura) didn't have it easy at all growing up. Her maternal relatives weren't the least supportive of her, no matter what she did, and even forced her to wear her cousin's old clothes because they didn't want to be bothered with her needs. Then, some five years ago, the girl had been kidnapped and held captive for a week, and before the police could even find her and return her to her relatives, the man behind the kidnapping had already raped her before being shot down. Despite the extensive therapy sessions, young Shinji never truly recovered from the trauma, made more brutal when it was discovered she had been impregnated by her rapist and, despite the available alternatives, forced by her aunt and uncle to have the baby.

 _Good Lord,_ she thought, looking over at Shinji, who, despite her youthful face, seemed rather worn, and then at her son, who stayed close towards her, but paid as much attention as he could to his stuffed, angel-winged panda. _It must be so hard on her to be reminded all the time of what happened to her._

Unfortunately, the file didn't explain EVERY detail necessary to know. There was no mention of why she was forced to have her son and not have an abortion, or why she was kidnapped to begin with.

Suddenly, Shinji stopped walking and dropped the pamphlet, dropping to her knees as she held her stomach, groaning in pain.

"Aurgh," she groaned, taking deep breaths.

" _It was your fault, Shinji,"_ she recalled her aunt telling her. _"You were asking for it."_

" _You're nothing but trouble,"_ her uncle told her. _"You can't even defend yourself."_

" _They tell you not to fight, then put you down because you tried to fight,"_ a boy around her age told her. _"No wonder you're the worst type of child. You're an embarrassment, no matter what you do."_

"Uh, Mommy?" Shado asked her.

"Stay back," she groaned at him, baring her teeth, and he stayed back.

She looked at him…and instead of seeing a small echo of herself…saw only that man's face. It made it hard to look at him sometimes, even though she knew it was never her son's fault.

" _You can't do this to me!"_ She cried at her aunt and uncle when they refused to listen to her.

" _We're doing this!"_ Her aunt enforced.

 _Damn them!_ She thought, starting to feel better, and got back up. _Damn them all._

"Are you alright?" Misato asked her.

"I'm fine," she grunted, but it sounded like she was anything but fine.

To be continued…

A/N: Well, here's the first chapter of the reversal version. Let me know what you expect to see from future chapters.


	2. Scars of the Flesh

Creation began on 05-23-16

Creation ended on 05-24-16

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Different from You: Scars of the Flesh

 _"Where's my Mommy?"_ Misato thought about Shado's question after the battle between Unit-01 and the Third Angel.

She wished there had been an alternative to NERV's situation than to use Shinji as a pilot after discovering the limits of the young mother's tolerance towards the world around her after everything she went through. Even the discovery of the girl's father's complete indifference towards her years of abuse and her rape and unwanted motherhood made her feel more sympathy for the two victims.

"Captain Katsuragi," came Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki to her in the hallway of the infirmary as she watched the miserable scene between the incapacitated Third Child and her son. "How long has he been in there with her?"

"He's…never left her side since she was placed in the room," she explained to him, wondering when, if 'when' was even the best choice of words at a time like this, Shinji would wake from her coma she was reduced to being in after the Angel self-destructed. "How could something like this happen to someone like her?"

"We had no other choice but to entrust the situation to her," Fuyutsuki sighed.

"Not the Angel," she clarified her question. "Her. How could something like the abuse she went through over the years just happen to someone like her…and nobody did anything to help her?"

Fuyutsuki looked at the comatose girl in the hospital bed being watched over by her son. He recalled the last time he ever saw the girl when she was little…and innocent, but it was a day where innocence was maimed.

"I don't know how anyone could ever survive what she went through," he said to her.

"The doctors all said her body's a history book of abuse. She has burns and scars over most of her limbs and torso. I even saw a 'V'-shaped scar on her chest. She went through Hell…and nobody did anything to help her."

Misato walked away from the room to find Ritsuko; she had the original file on the girl, and she wanted the names, address and contact numbers of the people that Shinji lived with up until arriving in Tokyo-2.

In the room, Shado continued to watch over his mother as she looked like she was sleeping peacefully. If anything, Shinji might as well as have been dead and preserved. The boy looked at her right arm and at the series of cuts and bruises on it; he remembered how she had to stop her uncle from using the belt on him just because he spilled juice on the floor.

"Mommy," he uttered, reaching for her hand, "please, wake up soon."

-x-

In his office, Gendo looked at the photos the doctors had taken of his daughter when they wheeled her into the infirmary, seeing the series of scars and bruises on her body. Besides the burns and cuts on her wrists and legs, two other injuries the girl had were the large bruises on her back and the ill-fated cesarean section that didn't pan out for anyone.

The door to his office opened and Ritsuko came in; she was responding to his order to come with news update of the Third Child.

"Has there been any change in the Third Child's condition?" He asked her.

"No, sir," she answered him. "Brain activity is below awareness. She doesn't respond to external stimuli. Also, there may be another problem that was discovered."

"Elaborate."

"The Third Child's medical history reads like a person with a terminal illness. Despite her blood testing clean of any diseases, she shows a complete lack of nutrients and other requirements, like someone starved her over a prolonged period. Additional tests showed she had over a dozen fractures that never healed properly, severe burns and scarring, even a damaged uterus."

The only part of the Third Child that wasn't as harmed as the rest of her body had been over the years was her head; if anyone were to overlook her other injuries, they would probably think she looked fine. But Gendo suspected better than this to be a logical reason; most men don't like a damaged face.

"…Commander, your daughter may be dying," Ritsuko uttered to him, but he wasn't paying attention right now.

His daughter's face, her son's face, they were both echoes of her face. Of Yui's face.

" _I'll pilot the Eva, but not for any of you,"_ Sakura, or Shinji, told him back on the umbilical bridge in the Eva cage. _"Only because I want to at least see another day for my son."_

 _And from what her records reveal, it's a love/hate relationship with her son,_ he thought, switching over to a picture of the boy. _She loves him because he's hers_ _…_ _but hates him because of who his father was_ _…_ _and the fact that he was forced on her by her aunt and uncle._

-x-

The devastation caused by the Third Angel's self-destruction had been contained to just one city block, but the Eva's damages were extensive after the Third Child lost consciousness. And because there was a large hole where a city block used to be, Misato had to drive around the damaged block in order to leave the city to go to the girl's previous residence. Ever since reading up on the rest of Shinji's background, Misato wanted to give the aunt and uncle a piece of her mind for what they, as the girl's guardians, did to her and her son, and for the fact that they weren't returning her calls.

 _I wanna know why,_ she thought, now leaving Tokyo-3.

-x-

Even in the vast darkness of this empty, city-like place that she found herself in, a bruised, broken and lonely Shinji found herself questioned with a sense of obligation that didn't make sense to her at the moment…and she was unsure if it would ever make sense.

" _Do you want to return?"_ She recalled a question written on the ground in front of her when he awoke on the streets.

 _Do I want to return? Return to what? To where or who?_ She thought; she couldn't remember what had happened to her.

All she could remember was that her body hurt allover. With every step that she took…and every breath that she took. And the worst feeling of pain she felt was the pain in her waist.

 _Why does everything hurt?_ She wondered.

-x-

"…So, is everything in that girl's file accurate?" Makoto Hyuga asked Maya Ibuki, referring to the Third Child, sometime later in Central Dogma.

"Yeah," she answered, having read and reread the file over and over again. "Can you believe this life she has? She was raped by a man that kidnapped her for a week, and when her guardians found out she got pregnant by him, they force her to have the baby instead of getting her an abortion. What kind of people force a preteen girl to have her rapist's child?"

"And her body's bruised and scarred allover, too," added Shigeru Aoba, who had also gone over the girl's file. "And nearly everyone addresses her by a boy name, despite it not being her actual name. As crazy as it seems right now, she's probably safer in that infirmary than she's likely to have not been wherever she used to reside."

"Maybe, but what about her son?" Maya questioned. "What happens to him if his mother doesn't wake up?"

Neither Hyuga or Aoba could answer that question; as far as they both knew, the boy didn't have anyone besides his mother to look after her. Or rather, the boy didn't have anyone besides his mother that seemed willing to look after him.

To be continued…

A/N: I'm considering ideas inspired by the new _X-Men: Apocalypse_ film. There's this bootleg scene on YouTube with Angel becoming Archangel, but the scene's terrible because of its viewing. But what do you think of a chapter featuring what Shinji/Sakura went through in her childhood from before Shado was born and afterwards?


	3. Lessons of Torment

Creation began on 05-24-16

Creation ended on 05-24-16

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Different from You: Lessons of Torment

It seemed like a quaint house in the countryside, but the fact that nobody was answering the doorbell that Misato was pressing irritated her. It had been fifteen minutes, and nobody was responding to her presence.

"Excuse me, may I help you?" An elderly woman in her fifties asked the purple head.

"Yes, do you know where the people that live here are?" Misato asked her; it had taken her this long to find the Ikaris' residence, so she could sacrifice a few more seconds to learn something new.

"Io and Katagiri Ikari?" The lady responded. "They took their son, Mokuba, and left. Io claimed they were taking a vacation, but I knew they were moving away from here. I knew as soon as they got rid of that niece of theirs with the little boy they forced her to have."

"They just left? Did they say where?"

"No, sorry. My heart goes out to Sakura and Shado, though. Pity for a young girl that may not live to see fifteen or her son turn five."

"What are you talking about?"

"One of my granddaughters heard from a friend that heard from a friend that the Ikari girl that was being tortured by most of the people around these parts was dying. Something to do with all those beatings she had over the years. I actually suspected that her having a baby at such a young age was the wrong choice the aunt and uncle made for the girl. Some girls Sakura's age were actually known to die having children, you know. I just read that a twelve-year-old died bearing twins by her own grandfather. That was awful."

Misato was shocked to hear of all this.

"You think they knew, and that's why they made her have her son?" She asked her.

"Maybe not, but Io was no religious woman. I know a guy that knows a lady that asked her why she and her husband made that poor girl carry that monster's baby to term. She still lives around here."

Misato wanted to know where she could find this woman and ascertain the would-be truth.

-x-

"…Well, Unit-01 should be fully repaired within another day," said Ritsuko to Gendo, a day later in his office, updating him on the Eva's regeneration. "We'll be able to begin regeneration of Unit-00 within another day."

"Good," he responded, although he was only paying her half his attention; his attention was mostly drawn to his daughter's medical files scattered around on his desk.

Ritsuko found this unusual behavior for someone like Gendo. For someone that treated his daughter with complete indifference to her tormented past, he was paying an interesting amount of attention to her from a distance. She took this as her cue to leave and turned away.

"Doctor Akagi," Gendo stopped her, "where is the Third Child's son?"

"Last time I checked, the boy was still in the room she was brought into," she answered him.

"He was there all day yesterday and all night?"

"Nobody was really looking into his well-being, sir."

-x-

Shado was half-asleep in the chair as he continued to watch over his comatose mother. He wasn't even sure if she would ever wake up from it. All he knew was that he didn't have anyone else to worry over besides his mother. His eyes shut the instant his head lowered to his left side; weariness had claimed him, along with grief and hunger, as he hadn't eaten since before he and Sakura left that place of suffering.

The next time anyone came in, it was just to replace Shinji's IV bag, not bothering to bring in a spare pillow or blanket for the child. That is, until Fuyutsuki showed up and asked how long the boy had been in the room.

-x-

"Yumi Muto?" Misato asked the woman that answered the door to respond to her ringing the doorbell a moment ago after finding the address.

The woman, in her early-forties, responded, "Yes, that's me. Can I help you?"

"My name is Misato Katsuragi, and I was hoping you could enlighten me on the background of a young girl named Sakura Ikari. Most people addressed her as Shinji."

"You mean, the abused girl with the little boy?" Yumi asked.

"Yes, ma'am."

"There's not really much to enlighten about. There was the belief that the girl was mainly abused by her relatives, simply because of who her parents were. She was kidnapped by a wanted sex offender…and then raped and tortured further by him. When it was discovered that she was pregnant, her aunt, not being the least bit sympathetic towards her niece, forced her to carry the pregnancy to term, despite being informed that girls older than her couldn't bear children until they were much older. But Io, being a sadist, claimed that the girl needed to be taught a lesson about pain, and that she was constantly asking for trouble to come at her."

Yumi invited Misato into her apartment and offered her tea.

"So, her aunt knew that she could actually…die from childbirth…and still made her go through it?" Misato questioned.

"She, her husband, and they gave her no choice. Even when I heard that Sakura, Shinji, begged them to let her have an abortion, they refused. Rumor was that they even beat her for begging. Heh, there was even a rumor that they let their son rape her, too, whenever he felt like it. Nobody that actually had any concerns about what that girl was going through in their custody could ever prove any of the rumors to be true because the police wouldn't take it serious. But one of my friends' wife is a doctor, and she says that the last time she saw the girl, she was less than alive. Something about how the body can only endure so much before breaking from the strain. She actually believed that her failed cesarean operation had a hand in shortening the girl's life because she gave birth before her son could be removed from her womb."

"So, they purposely tortured her, both of them…even when they did nothing to deserve it?"

"That's what everyone that had their concerns believed."

"Do you know where they could've gone to?"

"Anywhere but this island, that's for sure. You could try Hokkaido or one of the other islands less populated. Probably trying to get an early run from the law if anyone actually cares to enforce the penalties for abuse."

With this new information, Misato was even more disgusted with what happened to Sakura in her past. Her aunt and uncle not just being unsympathetic towards her for her rape and impregnation, but abusing her even before it ever happened.

"…Every time she tried to fight back, the abuse was made worst," Yumi continued, and Misato became more disgusted. "Anytime her boy did something that was even an accident, even crying in the dead of the night, there was no denying that she received a scar for his actions as a consequence."

 _No wonder she's so screwed up,_ she thought, feeling that she was able to understand the abuse and rape victim and young mother. _She's been tortured for a long time, so she sees everyone around her as a torturer, even for the slightest mishap. Even when I unintentionally fell on her, she must've been terrified that I could hurt her. Barely a kind word. She probably even sees her rapist's face every time she looks at her son. Nobody should have to go through what she did._

-x-

"…Hello, young man," Fuyutsuki greeted Shado, who was awake sometime later, and simply turned to face the elder before returning his gaze to his mother. "How are you doing?"

Shado didn't answer him, though Fuyutsuki didn't take offense to this; based on what Captain Katsuragi had explained, the boy had asked his mother for permission to speak before speaking to anyone else, and only spoke for himself when he asked about where his mother was in the aftermath of the battle.

He looked at the girl, who looked rather at peace in a coma rather than suffering.

"Will she ever wake up?" He heard the boy ask him.

"I hope that she does," he answered him.

"She rarely smiles."

"Really?"

"One time, she did as I was waking up one day, but she had a black eye on her face. She didn't say anything about how she got it or why, but I always thought it was the uncle that hit her again."

"Her uncle hit her?"

"I saw him do it many times. He even told her that I was his going to be the death of her, whatever that means. I don't know why everyone says my mother is bad. She's never said or did anything that seemed bad…other than having me."

Fuyutsuki could sympathize with the boy. He and his mother seemed to be the only actual victims around here; a girl that had gone through trauma that no child should've ever experienced and a boy that was viewed as a bane that was forced onto the girl against her will.

"…Her aunt called me a lesson she was forced to learn every day until she couldn't take any more," the boy said, but Fuyutsuki didn't understand what he meant by that.

-x-

The drive back to Tokyo-3 was a long and infuriating one for Misato. She needed to take this up with Commander Ikari before she did anything else, but with or without his authorization, she was going to go after his in-laws. They just tortured the girl…and she did nothing to deserve their bull. If Misato had any say in what was to happen to these relatives, she'd probably kill them herself and call it justice for both the young mother and child.

"Those ain't relatives," she told herself. "Those are monsters. The worst kind of monsters."

The worst thing she could've imagined right now was the abused girl ending up dead and buried in one of those endless cemeteries that were more like forests of small, black pillars. That was something that just didn't sit well for her at all. In her mind, the girl looked like she should've been able to go on until she was at least eighty or so, not fourteen. And what's more was that it was a mistake to make her pilot the Eva to begin with; if her body was too battered from the start, her mind was in a worse state, made even more worse by the strain of synchronizing with the Eva.

To be continued…


	4. Agony

Creation began on 05-24-16

Creation ended on 05-26-16

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Different from You: Agony

It was just something that Fuyutsuki noticed because he was the only one tall enough to see it. Not even Shado was able to notice it. It was a red spot, caused by Shinji bleeding internally.

At first, the doctors thought it was the girl having her monthly visitor, but then they took her x-ray and found that it was worse than they had realized.

"She needs to be operated on, immediately!" A female nurse shouted, and the young girl was carted off to the operating room.

-x-

 _"You know what happened to you in that week you were kidnapped, don't you, Shinji?"_ She remembered the assigned therapist asking her.

" _Please, don't call me that,"_ she pleaded to him. _"Everyone calls me that, and it's not who I am. My name is Sakura, and, yes, I know exactly what happened to me in that week. You can see the result of it right in front of you."_

In her memories of her therapy sessions that she was made to attend in an attempt to recover from the trauma of what happened to her, Sakura had already begun to show that her kidnapper and rapist had left his mark on her as her belly swelled with his child in her third month. Her pleas for an abortion fell on deaf ears when she found out she was pregnant, and her aunt and uncle showing her no sympathy for what they claimed was her fault for getting kidnapped in the first place. She hated them for blaming her for what happened to her; she never did anything to deserve any of the crap they gave her, and she never asked for any of the horrible things that she experienced to befall her.

" _They blame me for everything that happens,"_ she told the therapist. _"I've never done anything wrong to anyone in my life, and I get abused for even the slightest mishap that occurs. I so much as try to raise my voice, I get beaten. I make a single complaint, they starve me until they decide to feed me again. And now, they're making me have my attacker's baby."_

Going back to the day of her rape, a day that scarred her for life, Sakura, wandering the streets of the empty city she found herself in, fell to the ground in pain.

" _Be quiet,"_ she heard the man order her, ripping her hand-me-downs off. _"You're asking for it."_

" _Please, stop! Let me go, please!"_ She remembered begging, only to receive a slap to her face.

And then, she felt the worst type of pain imaginable; it was like someone took a large, wooden spoon, some sort of tube or a baseball bat to her lower body…and impaled her with brutal force while holding her down and then taping her mouth shut.

" _Mmmmm!"_ She screamed, and the man just buried himself in her, holding her face down to her left.

 _There's not a day that passes me by that I don't find myself recalling that awful time,_ she thought, tossing and turning on the pavement. _And what he did to me just after a minute or so._

She remembered being turned onto her front onto the ground…and impaled by him again.

" _Mmmmmm!"_ She screamed louder, but the tape over her mouth muffled her cries.

She felt it go on and on for a long time…until she felt the man release something awful inside her. It felt like an eternity for her, even though it had only been five days since she had been kidnapped. The remaining two days were just beatings whenever the man felt like using her as a punching bag. By the time the police came and shot him, she felt like she was already about to die because of major blow to her stomach area. She even felt like she was about to choke on her own vomit because he kept the tape on her mouth.

" _And did they ever explain why they wouldn't let you have an abortion?"_ The therapist asked her.

" _All they tell me was that this was my fault, that I was asking for this to happen. I didn't want this. I didn't want this."_

She shook and shuddered on her left side, remembering how her aunt slapped her after she brought her home and made her tell her everything that she told the therapist. And then whimpered at the memory of what her aunt permitted her cousin to do to her later that night.

 _They're going to kill me,_ she thought, unable to escape. _They're going to kill me._

-x-

"…Oh, God," the male doctor gasped as the others present in the OR tried to stop the bleeding that Sakura was going through. "This isn't an internal bleeding."

"Then why is she…" A female nurse tried to question, but then saw something new. "Aaahh!"

They were all fortunate that the young girl was comatose; they weren't sure how she would've handled this new sense of madness.

-x-

Shado hated this waiting period he was going through. Nobody was saying anything and he was worried about his mother.

Fuyutsuki could see how this was weighing the little boy down with worry. But he was certain that Sakura would pull through, one way or another, and, hopefully, recover from her coma.

Suddenly, the door to the OR opened up and a female nurse stepped out.

"Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, sir?" She asked him.

"Yes?" He responded.

Shado looked up at the two, wondering if his mother was alright.

"Uh, could I speak to you in private?" She asked him.

"Actually, he should know if his mother is alright," Fuyutsuki expressed.

"The girl is fine, but still comatose, but there is an altogether different matter that I should really speak to you about in private."

Fuyutsuki sighed and walked further down the hall from Shado so that he couldn't hear them talk.

"You said she's still comatose, meaning she's still alive?" He asked her.

"Yes, that's right, but her bleeding…wasn't because of any damage to her organs," the nurse explained. "I'm afraid we were unable to save the baby."

"Baby? She was pregnant?"

"Based on the development, she was two months along, but her previous injuries, along with the stress she was under, caused her to miscarry."

"Was there…any indication that…she knew?"

"Unlikely, sir. With her previous injuries and the bruising to her front and back, she could've mistook any signs as something else, like a flu."

"Uh, I… Just…what was it?"

"A girl."

-x-

As Misato returned to the base, she met up with Ritsuko, who seemed to be studying something different from she knew her to specialize in.

"Hey, Rits," she greeted, meeting her in her office, trying to be jovial after what she had discovered.

"I'm glad you're back from your holiday, Misato," Ritsuko responded. "We might have a problem with the Third Child."

"What do you mean?"

"While you were away, the girl had a miscarriage while in her coma. The baby didn't make it."

"Hold on, she was pregnant?"

"She may have not known because of her previous injuries. But that's not the worst of it."

"What could be worse than what I was trying to discover?"

"Finding out who the girl's second rapist is. The fetus had over sixty-two percent of the mother's DNA, which narrows down the list of suspects to the girl's family."

"Wait a minute, sixty-two percent? Shouldn't the fetus have had only fifty percent or so?"

"Yes, but that's only if the parents weren't related by blood, but were genetically compatible."

"So…who the Hell raped her and got her pregnant that wasn't unrelated to her?"

"Since this was the result of incest, a male on her mother's side."

"Her cousin, Mokuba Ikari."

"What makes you say that?"

"I was trying to find her relatives back where she and Shado used to live and those three up and left shortly after they were sent to Tokyo-2. I had to get information from a woman that had concerns about the abuse Sakura was going through. Those three were torturing the girl and her son every chance they got. There was even a rumor that the parents let their son rape her. If what you say about the fetus' genetic background is accurate, then it's no longer a rumor. They let their son rape her, and he got her pregnant, just like how her first rapist got her pregnant, and they wouldn't let her get an abortion."

"Well, if the commander were here right now, he'd probably agree with you on that accusation."

"Speaking of whom, where is he at a time like this?"

-x-

Gendo cursed at himself for being here right now when he knew it wouldn't do her any good. When he was informed of the Third Child's miscarriage, he just left his office and went straight to the infirmary. He wasn't even sure why he bothered to come his daughter at all when he paid her no mind. But the sight of her emotionless face, despite all of the suffering she had gone through, it just reminded him so much of Yui.

" _I'll pilot the Eva, but not for any of you,"_ he remembered her saying to him after he gave her very little choice in the matter. _"Only because I want to at least see another day for my son."_

"Even when you didn't want him, you had no choice but to devote yourself to him," he expressed. "You gave up on a life for yourself, but you wanted him to see another day."

He wasn't even sure if she could hear him speak. There was probably even no point in speaking to her. But when he was told that his daughter was likely dying because of her injuries and lack of medical aid, he was unsure of how to rework his scenario should his daughter actually die. He could've probably used his grandson, but the boy was more afraid of all of them than he probably could've been of the Angels…and he was nowhere near the appropriate age requirement to pilot an Evangelion.

"Ikari," he turned to face Fuyutsuki, who seemed bothered by the fact that he was in the same room as his damaged daughter. "I take it you've heard?"

He turned back to his daughter. Sighing, he turned to leave the room.

"Where is the boy?" He asked him.

"He's in the recovery room waiting for his mother to be returned," Fuyutsuki answered him. "What are you thinking of doing, Ikari? If you're thinking of exploiting the boy, I must put my foot down. They've both suffered enough, physically and emotionally."

But Gendo wasn't about to argue with his former teacher. He just asked where the boy was, not what he thought about doing with the boy.

Fuyutsuki sighed, looking down at the girl, actually fearing what she could or would do to them if she found out her son had been placed into the same situation she had been put. And then, knowing that it was likely against better judgment when it came to NERV, he went after Gendo to keep him from doing something they would likely regret.

"Ikari, this is unnecessary," he told Gendo as he saw him in front of the previous room. "Whatever you're thinking of doing to the boy, all you'll actually do is…"

But he stopped talking when he saw what Gendo was seeing.

Shado, pressed and crouched against the wall in front of them, holding onto his stuffed animal, frightened by their presence.

-x-

Sometimes, she couldn't stand the sight of him. He looked like his father half the time. She knew it wasn't really his fault, but every time she saw her aunt and uncle and how much they pressured her to be a mother, something they forced her to go through, she just gets so angry…and her breasts hurt from the milk production. And then, there was the agonizing cesarean scar from her failed cesarean section that was unlikely to heal.

" _The world is cruel, Shinji,"_ her aunt told her, looking at her with scorn as she held her son. _"Everything you say or do has a consequence. You can't do anything right. You probably can't even die right, either. You are constantly attracting trouble."_

Sakura just felt all this anger that she couldn't unleash on anyone because she would get harmed just for trying to. As she laid on her back and looked up at the darkness over the empty city, she just wondered when she would either escape from this nightmare she found herself in…or just died.

"Your life has been one of immense suffering," a male voice uttered to her, and she looked away from the sky…and someone that just appeared beside her. "Immense, unjustifiable suffering…and you didn't deserve any of it."

The man beside her bore an unusual resemblance to herself (or even her son), only a little lifeless…and dressed like he was prepared to a Japanese funeral…but also wearing armaments that made him seem like a one-man army…or an unusual killer of sorts. There was a shotgun strapped to his back with a bandolier on his front, a pair of pistols and sub-machine guns, and some spiked knuckles on his hands (though, right arm was sporting a gauntlet with a bold word engraved on it. It read, _"DEATH"_.

"Are you…the Grim Reaper?" She asked him.

"In a way," he responded, sitting down in front of her. "Death has many forms, many faces, many voices at its disposal."

Sakura returned her gaze to the darkness above her.

"Are you…here to kill me?" She asked him.

The young man, Death, looked at her…and answered, "Not today, Sakura Ikari. Not yet. It's not your time to leave this realm of mortality. But you won't escape the fate you have been dealt."

"Did my life mean anything to anyone?" She asked him, wanting to know at least that much.

"Your life meant everything to him," he answered her, cryptically.

"Who?"

"You know who."

-x-

The doctors brought his mother back into the room and immediately left, allowing him to approach the comatose girl without much fear.

"Everyone frightens me, Mommy," Shado told his mother. "Please, wake up."

But Sakura didn't respond to her son's cries for her to wake. She just continued to lay there in the hospital bed, unaware of the passage of time around her.

To be continued…

A/N: Brutality is without boundaries.


	5. Shadows of Doubt

Creation began on 05-28-16

Creation ended on 06-04-16

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Different from You: Shadows of Doubt

Misato was convinced that out of anyone that actually cared for Sakura, her child of rape, Shado, had the patience to wait around for his mother to awaken from her coma. And he'd been waiting in the room for three days so far, barely leaving her side, except to use the bathroom.

"How is he holding up?" Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki asked in the hall outside the room.

"If she doesn't wake up from her coma soon, I fear he's going to break," she responded. "And that's unless, of course, he isn't already breaking."

"It's hard to break what's already broken."

A minute later, they saw Shado step out of the room, pressed up against the wall as he calmly walked past the two adults on his way to the bathroom; it didn't even matter if they tried to use kind words to him, the boy was viewing them all as frightening.

"Any progress so far on finding the relatives?" Misato questioned Fuyutsuki; ever since the revelation of Sakura's second pregnancy and miscarriage and the discovery of the second guy that raped her being her own cousin, Commander Ikari had the agency seek out his in-laws for questioning in regards to Sakura and Shado's treatment over the years.

"There have been some leads," he explained. "I've never known Ikari to take an interest in his daughter's treatment like this before."

"What, he's always looked the other way before?"

"He never speaks about her."

-x-

It was pointless to think that either woman would forgive him for his own transgressions, but Gendo knew that there was a line that was never drawn with his in-laws and his daughter. There was probably some doubt that Unit-01 wasn't aware of what Sakura had gone through in her past, but he couldn't deny that there was no hope for any absolution for anyone in the Ikari family right now. His daughter was battered and broken, beyond medical salvation and with only a short life to look to if she ever woke up and her son was unlikely to adjust from any of the emotional damage he suffered alongside her, and he himself had realized something that was beyond forgiveness: He didn't anticipate any of what had happened to Sakura. He had expected some loneliness, emotional abuse and neglect, but never rape and physical abuse of such extreme brutality and degradation.

 _They could have let her have an abortion,_ he thought as he looked at the various pictures of various people in various parts of the country on his desk. _They could have prevented a grim reminder of her torture. Instead, they force her to have her rapist's child…and make her life worse than before…and treat the both of them worse than a stray dog you train to be a fighter._

If Yui could see him now, she would probably put him down for his role in what happened to their daughter first before putting down her sister and her family for their role.

"Commander Ikari, sir?" A man in a black suit made himself known in his office, getting his attention. "We've located Io and Katagiri Ikari. They were supposedly vacationing in New Yokohama when we found them living in an apartment in a high-rise tower. We're bringing them in shortly."

Gendo looked up at him and responded, "Excellent. Make sure they're kept separated."

"Sir."

-x-

When Shado returned from his second trip to the bathroom, he stopped at a somewhat-frightening sight.

Sakura, climbing out of the hospital bed, holding onto the IV pole, looking paler than she usually did because of other reasons, and she looked down at her son, who seemed to want to smile at her, but refrained from doing so.

"Mommy?" He asked her.

She set her bare feet on the cold, sterile floor and struggled to stand.

"Hey, baby," she greeted her, glad to see a familiar face when she awoke.

Shado slowly approached her, but kept his arms to his sides.

As she lowered to her knees, Sakura raised her left arm up…and her son went to her, allowing her to hold him.

"I'm glad you woke up," he told her.

"Me, too," she responded.

-x-

"…Really?" Misato questioned Ritsuko over the phone in her apartment, being informed that Sakura had finally awakened from her coma. "She's awake?"

"That's right," Ritsuko confirmed.

Misato hung up and grabbed her coat; she wasn't sure if anyone told Sakura that she had miscarried while in her coma, but in case nobody broke it down to her easily (if "easily" was even a word that could be used in the girl's case), she felt that she should've done it. After everything they discovered about what happened to the girl over her life, the woman felt that they should let the girl and her son go live whatever was left of the girl's life in relative peace.

-x-

They wouldn't tell her anything, but insisted that she stay in the hospital. She didn't understand what they wanted of her, if not to repeat what she did that was all she could remember before finding herself in the hospital bed. Though, she did feel…unpleasant from the waist down.

"Mommy?" Shado asked, holding a cup of ice water for her. "Are you okay?"

"Just…a little sore," she explained.

Before she could retake the drink from him, a man entered the room. He was elderly, dressed in a brownish-gray uniform, and his presence prompted Sakura to pick up the nurse call button out of fear of him.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Sakura," the elder raised his arms up to calm her. "You've suffered enough. Both of you have suffered enough."

"What makes you think you know how I've suffered?" She questioned him, her voice shaking with desperation to push the button. "What makes you even care that we have suffered?"

"It was all wrong, what your aunt and uncle did to you," he stated. "They didn't do what they were supposed to do. Instead of kindness, they showed you contempt. Instead of sympathy, they gave you apathy…"

"They tortured me," she stated, breathing heavily now, still wanting to press the button. "They beat me. They let their son do awful things to me like that man that kidnapped me did to me…and nobody did anything to stop them."

The elder saw her left hand trembling; the girl was beyond all sense of reasonable doubt terrified of most people.

"What do you people want from me?" She asked him.

"Hey, what's going on in here?" They heard a woman's voice outside in the hall.

It was Misato Katsuragi.

-x-

"…What the Hell's the meaning for all this?" A woman in her mid-forties with grayish-black hair questioned as she sat at a metal table.

Actually, she was handcuffed to the table, but the men in black suits that came for her family never said she was under arrest or anything.

The door to the room she was in opened, and Gendo came in.

"Oh, it's you," she uttered, irritated as he sat in the chair across the table from her. "What do you, of all people, want now?"

Gendo placed a folder on the table in front of her with a picture of Sakura atop it. He then opened it, revealing various photographs of the girl's bruises, cuts, fractures, internal injuries, everything that detailed a history of abuse. This included the most recent sign of her abuse.

"She was in a coma for nearly a week after she arrived on her first day," he explained. "I forced her to participate in a program that could get her killed, not knowing that she already had a death sentence placed upon her by those she lived with for over a decade."

"And what has any of this to do with me?" Io asked him.

"All these marks on her body are months and years old. The doctors say she may have only three months left before she succumbs to some of these injuries. I want to know why, Io. Why did you abuse her?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't lie to me. If it wasn't you, then it was your husband and son that abused her."

"Nobody abused her. She did all this to herself. She's a sympathy junkie, always needing to play the victim ever since she got kidnapped and raped."

"You forced her to have her rapist's child…when she begged for an abortion."

"She needed to learn a lesson."

"By forcing her into motherhood prematurely?"

"She was asking for trouble all the time."

"Then what of this here?" He asked, showing her the picture of the dead fetus. "Was she asking for this to happen, too?"

"I don't know. Ask her." Io expressed. "She never could keep her legs closed."

Gendo frowned in rage at this woman for the first time in defense of his daughter. If Sakura hadn't suffered the way she had over the years, he would've probably looked the other way, but now that he knew what his sister-in-law wasn't saying to him, he couldn't look the other way.

"We identified the fetus as your son's," he told her, getting up to leave, "and he's being questioned about the multiple times he's raped her."

"Hey, wait a minute! You can't question him without parental consent!"

But Gendo didn't care about the parental consent rules. He wanted to know why they hurt his daughter the way they did.

-x-

After calming Sakura down and getting her to let go of the nurse call button, Misato explained to the girl what had happened to her during her coma.

"The doctors all say that you suffered a miscarriage during your coma," she explained to her.

"A…miscarriage?" Sakura questioned; she didn't understand what that meant.

"You were pregnant," Fuyutsuki clarified, "and the baby didn't make it."

She was trying to comprehend this all, but it was a knife to her chest.

"Do you…know who did it?" She asked them.

"We know that it was your cousin," Misato told her.

"They let him get away with it. They always got away with everything they did."

"They're not going to get away with what they did to you, Sakura," Fuyutsuki told her.

"How can you possibly know? Everything they did was a threat. I so much as told anyone, they would make me regret the day I was born, which I've regretted for over eight years now."

Of course, Shado didn't blame her for saying that. Ever since he could remember, it was they were both nothing more than a huge mistake made by someone that just likes to make a mess and not clean up after themselves.

"NERV is looking for them right now," Misato explained to Sakura. "When we find them and make them answer for what they did to you two, they're going to pay for their crimes."

-x-

"…Hey, we never wanted anything to do with the girl!" Katagiri shouted to a man in a black suit after being questioned about the abuse Sakura Ikari had been subjected to. "She was trouble since day one!"

"And how is a girl that was kidnapped and raped five years ago been trouble since the day you met her?" The suit asked him.

"She never does as she's told! Even when she was kidnapped, she wasn't worth the ransom demand her kidnapper set. We weren't going to pay the equivalent of five-million for her return. She's not even worth ten-million…or even five-thousand."

"And that justifies the years of physical and emotional abuse you, your wife and son put her through, along with forcing her to go through an unwanted pregnancy caused by her rapist?"

"Hey, I want a lawyer. I'm not saying anything else."

"It sounds like you've already said enough."

-x-

"…I only did it because my parents told me I could," a fifteen-year-old boy said to the two men in the room with him. "They said it was okay, that she was already messed up."

One of the suits slid a photograph of the dead fetus to him and said, "This wasn't okay. They ran the DNA of the fetus, and you know what the medical examiner discovered?"

"The same thing we found out when we ran your DNA, kid," the other suit added in on the conversation. "You did worse than hurt your cousin. You got her knocked her over two months ago, and she had a recent miscarriage caused by her injuries. This was going to be your daughter if she lived."

"No, no, no. I didn't do anything of this sort to her. I was always careful."

"Not careful enough. Did you slap her around while you were at it? Did you slap her son around while you were at it?"

"No, I never touched the boy."

-x-

They were all trying to deny any responsibility about what they did, but Gendo was determined to make them reveal what they did, no matter what. As he monitored the interrogations on his computer, he saw his nephew appear to be the first one to break the silence. Unfortunately, he couldn't hear what was being said in any of the interrogations.

The door to his office opened and Ritsuko ran inside.

"Commander Ikari!" She gasped. "You gotta come down to the infirmary, immediately!"

"Is it the Third Child?" He asked her.

"No," she answered. "It's the Third Child's mother."

-x-

She didn't want to be in the room, anymore. She needed to get away from the infirmary, especially after being informed that she may only have three months left because of the extent of her injuries caused by her constant abuse.

Fortunately, NERV had a small garden with a fountain, so it seemed like an adequate setting for the girl to cope with everything that happened to her and her son.

She didn't say anything to her son, and he didn't say anything to her. Neither needed to say anything at all. They rarely spoke much when they were living with their abusive relatives, excluding Sakura's reactions to being abused.

"How are they doing?" Misato asked Fuyutsuki, returning from seeing the girl's unsympathetic aunt and uncle.

"What's another way of saying 'broken'?" Fuyutsuki asked her, watching the two from a distance.

"Damaged."

"Well, that's clearly the only way I can describe the two. They've been quiet ever since they sat down by the fountain. It's like they're in a solitary world where nobody can hurt them. Mostly Sakura, though. You can try to reach out to her, but… Her aunt and uncle, their son…her rapist… They've left her doubting everyone around her, so she doesn't know who to trust."

"They might as well have killed her already," Misato expressed; she wanted to shoot the aunt and uncle right then and there while putting their son in a detention center. "They might as well have killed her."

"Excuse me, you two," a female voice uttered behind them, "but is Sakura out there in the garden right now?"

They turned to face the person behind them…and saw a woman that looked like an older Sakura, dressed in a hospital gown.

Fuyutsuki pointed to where Sakura and Shado were, and the woman walked past them, out into the garden.

-x-

"…How did this happen?" Gendo asked Ritsuko, standing in front of the deactivated Unit-01 in the Eva cages.

"The technicians left the Entry Plug inserted into the Eva," Ritsuko explained. "Then, the Eva activated on its own and didn't shut down until five minutes passed. When the plug was ejected, the technicians found her unconscious inside it."

Gendo deduced that his wife somehow made a successful attempt to return from her displacement within the Eva, but he had some suspicion for the reasons she came back for. However, he suspected that it was mainly because of the suffering their daughter had experienced under the care of her sister's family. And there was no doubt that she knew about her miscarriage and the fetus' father.

-x-

Sakura looked up at the woman from the tree she was sitting against…and then turned away from her. She looked like an older version of herself, but clearly had something that she herself lacked.

Shado looked up at the woman, and wondered who she was and why she looked like his mother…but was a bit more…lively.

"Hello, you two," she greeted them, though neither responded.

She sat down in front of them and noticed one of the scars on Sakura's exposed skin under her neck; it looked like it had been from a knife that cut deep into her.

"I would ask how you're doing, Sakura, but I can see that the answer clearly on your face," she told the young woman. "You probably don't remember me, but…I am…"

"I know who you are," Sakura cut her off, her voice sounding emotionless as her head laid against the trunk of the tree. "I've seen your picture every time your sister was done beating me."

Yui looked down at the grass and pondered how to reach out to her daughter, who was clearly, beyond reasonable doubt, too broken.

"Why are you here?" Sakura asked her.

-x-

"That's her mother?" Misato questioned what Fuyutsuki revealed, watching the scene between the two ladies and the little boy. "She…doesn't look too happy to see her."

"It would seem that not even Yui can help her daughter recover from her years of abuse," Fuyutsuki suspected.

The two then saw Shado get up off the grass and approach Yui, who simply patted his head gently while his mother watched on.

-x-

"…My parents would cut her whenever she or her son caused even the slightest bit of trouble for them," Mokuba confessed to the suits. "Mother decided not to mess with her face much because she needed a familiar to remind herself of how much she hated her sister."

-x-

"…So we had our son rape her a few times," went Katagiri in his extended interrogation. "She was already messed up. What difference does it make?! It wasn't like she was going to ever meet a nice guy, not with her history."

-x-

"…She was too much like her mother," went Io on a tape recording, in front of Yui, who didn't really need to hear any of this, but might as well as did because it wouldn't have changed anything between herself and her sister…and it wasn't going to change anything between herself and her daughter, who was beyond anyone's ability to save. "We were doing her a favor by treating her the way we did. There are many things that I regret in my life…including getting landed with that girl and her bastard…but I will never apologize for the choices I made for her."

"I've heard enough," she told her husband, whom even she had her doubts about because of what their daughter had endured. "How could something like this all happen to her? None of this was ever meant to happen to her. She was supposed to be cheerful and full of life and love, not this…this broken shell of her former self."

They were all in Gendo's office; she, her husband, and Fuyutsuki.

Sakura and Shado had been left in the fountain garden with Captain Katsuragi.

"I didn't do as I was supposed to," Gendo admitted his role in the suffering of their daughter. "I asked them to look after her, and they didn't."

"So, what now?" Fuyutsuki asked them.

"What now?" Yui responded. "Nothing now. What I had originally intended wouldn't make up for any of what has become history."

"But…you had a bright future ahead for her."

Yui looked at both men and announced, "What bright future is there for a girl that's dying because of what her family did to her?!"

Sakura never wanted to talk about it, about how her mother was alive instead of dead like she had been told so many years ago. She didn't even want to discuss the fate that was in store for her. All she really wanted…was just to do nothing but sit against the tree on the ground…or lay down somewhere else…and try to enjoy the subtle moment of silence around her and Shado.

"Mommy?" Shado asked her.

"Yes?" She responded to him.

"What…what is… What does it mean when…you don't have to hurt, anymore?"

Misato was surprised to hear him ask his mother that question. She was curious as to how Sakura was going to answer him. If she even intended to answer him at all.

"When you hurt no more?" She responded. "That…is when the world decides not to make everyday you haven't seen yet become a day filled with sorrow."

 _Even her words are full of pain,_ thought Misato. _Will she see a day deprived of agony?_

-x-

"…When she dies, Io," Yui informed her sister in the interrogation room, "you, your husband and son…will all be charged with Murder in the First Degree."

"What?!" Io gasped at her. "Murder?! We didn't kill her!"

"Yes, we did. Yes, we are. Her bruises, her cuts, her rape, her son… We took her life from her…and left her with nothing."

-x-

Sakura awoke in the dead of the night, her heart feeling like it was on fire. She fell out of the hospital bed and dragged herself over to her small bag.

-x-

Shado didn't like this feeling, leaving his mother alone for the night. Even if the woman had, more or less, threatened the other woman that was his grandmother and the elder man. It was just a feeling that made him worry about her above all else.

Even the room they set him up with didn't ease his mild mind.

"…Hello?" He heard the woman's voice outside the room. "What? When did… I thought she had three months left…"

As he laid under the bed, he feared that his mother had suffered again.

"Shado?" He heard the woman's voice as she stepped into the room. "Shado?"

He saw her legs and saw her bend down to look under the bed, finding him. She looked crushed, like she was about to cry.

-x-

"…Nobody heard anything," the female nurse explained to Yui and Gendo as they were in Sakura's room, finding their daughter on the floor, clutching onto a framed picture of herself and her son; it would seem that she had pulled it out of her bag…along with a notepad and pen. "The doctor that found her thinks that she…just held onto the picture after writing down this (she gives Yui the piece of paper) and cried."

Yui looked at the note Sakura had written. It was a message to Shado.

"' _I hope you can forgive me for not being all that I could've been for you,'_ " she read. " _'May your future be brighter than anything mine could have been. It has never been easy for either of us growing up around people that looked at us like we were bad or needed to be avoided, but I hope you will be able to see better days now. I don't believe in salvation for myself, but I never doubted in there being salvation for you. Forever, your mother, Sakura.'_ "

Gendo touched his daughter's hands that had a death grip upon the picture. He never thought that she could just die like this, but now he knew better. And it…hurt to know that his child had died. That both his children had died.

-x-

"Cause of death was a heart attack," the male medical examiner revealed. "It must've been nearly ten minutes before her heart gave out."

"Could she have attempted to call for help at any point during the heart attack?" Yui asked, looking down at her deceased child on the examination table.

"No, the attack weakened her to the point where screaming would have sounded like whispering, no matter how hard she raised her voice."

"Any speculation to why she reached for a framed picture?" Gendo asked him.

"That would seem to revolve around whoever knew her well enough to know about it."

Yui thought about their illegitimate grandson and whatever he knew about why his mother kept a picture of the two of them.

"I'll ask the little boy," she heard Gendo say.

"No, Gendo," she told him; it wasn't that she didn't doubt his ability to ascertain whether or not he could understand their grandson, but due to her own interaction with Shado, he, just as his own mother, seemed to show some tolerance towards those without much hidden intention behind an understanding goal. "It would be better if I spoke with the boy."

-x-

Nobody said anything to him, but Shado, who was sitting in the hall just outside the NERV hospital, had his doubts on anything but further grief at the moment.

"Um, Shado?" He heard the woman from before, walking over to him from afar. "How are you doing right now?"

He looked at her…and simply uttered what he felt he needed to be expressed.

"Mommy's sleeping now, isn't she?" He asked her. "She's sleeping…and won't wake up, no matter what…will she?"

Yui didn't expect him to ask such a question. He must have known the difference between life and death enough to know that, at least when it came to Sakura, his mother had been proof of people's frailty. Both physically and emotionally.

"I'm sorry," she apologized to him; she may have lost both her children to death, but Shado had just lost his mother. "There's something I needed to ask you about. Sa… Your mother…had a picture with her when she…went to sleep for the last time. It was of the two of you. Do you…know why she had it?"

Shado then held out his winged panda to her, and Yui was lost to his non-verbal response.

"It was my birthday," he uttered out. "This was the only toy I had that wasn't a hand-me-down. She saw me looking at stuffed animals and just got me one. She must've gone through other people's garbage for bottles and cans because those people we lived with wouldn't give her any money to buy anything."

Yui suspected that she now understood the significance of the picture. It was the only time her daughter had been able to get her son his first toy that was actually his. And it had probably been one of the only times where everything seemed calm and tranquil for the teen mother.

"They can't hurt Mommy, anymore, can they?" Shado asked.

"No," she answered him. "No, nobody can hurt her, anymore."

To be continued…


	6. Peace through Dreams

Creation began on 06-04-16

Creation ended on 06-07-16

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Different from You: Peace through Dreams

He didn't expect to hear any words of kindness from anyone. There wasn't a person in existence that he really knew outside his strained relationship with his mother. Even if he had a few conversations with people during the days leading up to her funeral, Shado never hoped to hear anything anyone had to say about Sakura that was the least bit kind. She might've not been one of those happy girls or the kind that boys her age would ask to have her number to call every now and then, or even the type of girl to believe in Heaven after death, but he still loved her all the same.

Even her funeral itself was rather small, for not many people were there in attendance. Any that were either were there because they had obligations to attend or because of other, more personal reasons. But the boy didn't really care for any of their reasons. It was still a heavy loss for him.

At least Sakura's tombstone stood out among the forest of tombstones. It wasn't shaped like a small pillar or cross. Rather, it was shaped like a figure from an old book with pictures of people, a woman that stood out, carved out of stone, with a serene expression on her face.

If anything, it probably would have been creepy if the figure had wings.

"…I never knew Sakura," he heard the woman with purple hair say in front of everyone there. "I never knew how hard she had it until she got hurt a day later. I didn't even know she had a little boy until I heard him ask her if he could speak. Sakura never asked for much of anything that happened to her to happen to anyone, not even people she felt deserved what what happened to her. She didn't even want to hurt anyone, regardless of the reasons. I hope that she's in a better place where every day is one where she can smile."

If only she knew how much Shado wanted to believe in that.

The next person to share what they knew or didn't know about Sakura was the other woman, Yui.

"Nearly ten years ago, I left her to ensure a brighter future," she stated, "and then I come back to discover that her own future had been deprived of its brightness. I thought her father would look after her if anything happened to me…and instead, Sakura was left in the care of my sister…and she and her family turned her life upside-down…and never an ounce of kindness or love. Even when she was harmed in the most unforgiving manner… I don't even know what Sakura's final thoughts of me were, as I had been out her life for nearly a decade. A delicate life that should have been considered precious…that I should have been involved in… I never even got to tell her that I was sorry for leaving her alone."

Shado recalled the many times his mother was hurt…and he was probably the only one that ever apologized for his mishaps that she had been blamed for. He even remembered the time her back received another scar from the aunt just because he forgot to clean the toilet seat after using it.

Some people left small flowers on the girl's grave while others merely bowed their heads to show respect.

A calm breeze came around Shado's neck, and he held on tighter to his winged panda plushy. Standing in front of his mother's grave, he had nothing but random thoughts on what was going to happen later. He hated that she was gone, that she was harmed so much for living…and people that knew barely doing anything about it, if they did anything at all. It felt hard to believe in such things as miracles, but he would've asked for just one thing that wasn't even as materialistic as what most people would have desired. All he really wanted…was just to see his mother alive.

"I miss you," he said to her grave.

-x-

"…How is the boy doing?" Ritsuko asked Gendo in his office, three days after his daughter's funeral.

"I haven't said a word to him," he revealed to her; with Yui returning and their daughter dying and their grandson being as distant from people after losing his mother, Gendo was at a loss on how to speak with the boy. "And he's not exactly talkative."

"What about convincing him to pilot the Eva?"

That was never going to happen, whether he asked or not. Only young teens could be used for piloting the Eva, the boy was going through a difficult time, and even if it were possible to use souls of teenage mothers, he couldn't do such a thing to Sakura or her son, even if he was the child of a rape.

-x-

The trial had gone strenuous on the part of Io, Katagiri and Mokuba Ikari. It was especially wrenching when Shado was called upon to explain many of his mother's scars and bruises and who caused them. Even if Io could have said the boy was lying, it would have been hard to claim so. Especially when there were pictures of the injuries to reference the abuse.

When the judge and jury came back with the final verdict, Yui, who had explained where she had been, using the cover story to hide the fact that she had been in the Eva for a decade, was hoping for a guilty verdict on all three of them.

"Have you reached a verdict?" The judge asked the primary juror, a woman.

"We have, your honor," she answered, and opened the folded piece of paper in her hands.

"On the charge of Murder in the First Degree, what say ye?"

"Not guilty of Murder in the First Degree."

Yui couldn't believe this. Her daughter was dead, and the jury wouldn't punish her sister for it.

"But guilty of Murder in the Third Degree," the juror expressed. "Unintentional cause of homicide…while constantly engaging in felony assault."

This surprised Yui. They didn't blame her sister for directly causing her daughter's murder, but held her responsible for indirectly causing it.

"On the charge of rape?" The judge questioned.

"Guilty."

"On the charges of aiding and abetting and accessory?"

"Guilty."

Io couldn't believe this was happening to them. She knew that her niece was trouble from the very first day she was forced upon them by Gendo. And now they were being treated like common criminals just because of how the girl suffered.

-x-

As Shado waited outside the courtroom for Yui with Misato, who seemed to be like the unsanctioned babysitter, holding onto his plush toy that he felt still smelled like his mother. Even if the relatives were held responsible for what they had done, it still wouldn't have changed the fact that all he really wanted was for Sakura to be alive again.

The doors to the room opened and several people stepped out, including Yui.

"So, how did it go in there?" Misato asked her.

But before Yui could answer her, the sounds of people screaming came.

"You bastard brat!" They heard a boy shout out, and Shado saw Mokuba running out of the room, holding something shiny. "You and your mother were always despicable!"

Yui and Misato saw what he was holding and tried to get him. Unfortunately, however, they didn't anticipate that he would release the object from his possession, aimed at Shado.

It all happened so fast that there was no time to avoid. It was as though time froze in some aspects and were sped up in other aspects.

Shado heard only silence. His very thoughts were the same ones he had for the longest time. Even in the darkest of suffering periods, the boy thought of his mother. Even on the saddest of days when forced to bathe in lukewarm water as a two-year-old that just started talking coherently, his memory of the young girl that was forced to breathe life into against her will by others was what made him want to smile. And so, he gave a small smile…or at least he thought he did.

-x-

"…How is he?" Fuyutsuki asked Yui, two days after the courthouse event, standing outside of the hospital room.

"The blade missed his heart," she explained to him what had happened, "but he's still recovering from the shock and blood loss. The doctors said that he was lucky to have the stuffed panda in front of him when Mokuba threw the knife at him, that it prevented most of the blade from going all the way in his chest."

The Sub-Commander peeked into the room and saw the boy asleep in the bed, holding onto the plushy with his hands.

"They couldn't remove it from his hands, no matter how hard they tried," said Yui to him, taking a tissue and wiping her tears away. "It was like he couldn't bear to be separated from it, like he'd never get it back if he did."

"It's…really all he has left of her," he suggested the stuffed animal's sentimentalism to the boy. "He wouldn't trade it away. Even if you offered him thousands of other plushies, he would only want the one his mother gave him."

Under the boy's medical garment was a series of bandages wrapped around his chest to cover the sewn up stab wound that, while not fatal, was necessary to keep from bleeding any further until it healed completely.

He then awoke and found himself in the hospital. An expression of regret on his face as he got up. His plushy looked as though it had a large slit on its chest that extended to its winged back.

"You're awake," he heard Yui say to him, relieved as she came back inside. "Are you alright?"

Aside from the bandages tied around his chest, Shado looked at the two adults and just said what he knew was right.

"I saw Mommy," he revealed to them. "She said she would always be watching me."

"You mean, you dreamt about your mother," Fuyutsuki suggested as a form of clarity.

"No," the boy responded. "I saw her. I spoke with her. There was a boy with her that looked a little bit like her, said his name was Shinji…and he was upset with how Mommy was hurt…and they said for me to tell you (he pointed his left hand's finger at Yui) not to do anything regretful towards me."

Yui was starting to wonder just how far gone was her grandson when he was incapacitated by Mokuba's attempt on his life. She was about to question his certainty…when she looked out at the window and saw someone she hadn't seen since they passed away.

Sakura, with large wings, looking at them before vanishing from sight.

"Um, did your mother have large wings behind her?" Yui asked.

"Bird wings," Shado explained. "She was one of those people that get them when they go up there to that happy place in the sky."

She was convinced that her daughter had become an angel and was enforcing that her son still had hope.

"You mean, an angel," she told him.

-x-

It was serious discussion, but one Gendo knew needed to be done. Even after Yui had returned due to what their daughter had gone through, he didn't think they were going to stay together, and he wasn't exactly good with talking with his grandson.

NERV was still on standby until the next Angel arrived, but the agency was now down an Eva because of a different priority that needed to be taken care of.

Yui had left Tokyo-3 with Shado in order to give the boy a fresh start in being free of abuse and neglect after Io, Katagiri and Mokuba were incarcerated for their crimes (and Mokuba was placed in solitary confinement, pending a hearing to decide whether or not to put him on death row). All she told her husband was that they failed their son and daughter, but didn't need to add their grandson to their list of failures.

Unit-01 was placed in cold storage and a request for the speedy transfer of the Second Child and Unit-02 was placed to circumvent their personnel requirements.

The First Child would be able to return to active duty in another month and Unit-00 will have been repaired and ready for reactivation.

SEELE wouldn't have cared about a dead and abused girl and her son so long as the Angels were dealt with, but Gendo, despite everything, had to hope for something that was unlike what he had believed in before Sakura had shown up.

He hoped that the remaining Angels never appeared after the Third Angel.

-x-

Sapporo was the only city on the island of Hokkaido that was affected by the least bit of crime, but it was also one of the only places left on the planet to be unaffected by Second Impact. On a personal level, Yui felt that it was likely the only place where Shado was going to be able to move on. It had been at least two months after Sakura's death and funeral, and the grandmother decided to tell the little boy about his mother's elder twin brother that had died two years after they were born…due to a poor heart condition; it was likely due to his death that Sakura had been stigmatized by being addressed by her brother's name, as if he had survived and his sister had been the one to die.

" _Is that why the boy I saw in my dream where I saw Mommy looked like her?"_ Shado had asked Yui, as he had no understanding of twins and why some would look alike while others would barely look alike.

" _Yeah,"_ she had explained to him that, if Shinji had been around Sakura's age, they would have looked alike in some sense.

As she was cleaning up her grandson's room one day, she looked over at his futon where he kept his winged panda plushy, which she had been permitted to stitch to close up the two holes caused by Mokuba's attempted murder. She picked it up and examined it again. Then, looking over at several other toys obtained, many of which seemed untouched, and she sighed over the toy's sentimental value to the boy.

 _I hope to meet you again, Sakura,_ she thought, looking over at the picture of her daughter on Shado's desk.

-x-

Epilogue

A young man walked among the forest of tombstones as he neared his destination, carrying a bouquet of flowers. The cemetery he entered was vastly different from the previous one he had been to, as it was an overgrown patch of grass and moss instead of a sea of parched soil that gave the impression of a desert.

 _Hard to believe that it's been this long since that time,_ he thought, seeing the angelic figure he was looking for that had been covered in a sheet of moss and sunflowers. _But there's not a day that goes by where I don't think about you._

He stood in front of the grave and placed the flowers in the small vase beside the plaque that carried the name of the person buried in the ground.

"Happy Birthday, Mommy," the young man expressed to the grave as if it were a person. "People around the country have been coming and going between here, Nagoya-2 and Osaka-2 for the past two years now. Grandmother says it's because nobody is sure whether or not to stay in one place or commute. That city we were at all those eleven years ago, Tokyo-3, has lost most of its population and economical backing. Can't say that I was surprised to hear about it, but I can't say that it was a nice place to live in, either. Nothing ever happened after Grandmother and I left. I mean, no giant creatures like the one you fought. Nobody thinks that any more will ever come back after that day, so people can actually continue rebuilding with some new technology recently made to drain larger bodies of water and freeze it within a three-mile radius. A lotta excavation has been going on around the world since the last time I came to see you."

Shado Ikari, now the same age as his mother had been prior to her death, had been visiting her grave every year. Whatever he discovered on the news, the Internet, or even in school, he would share with her so that she knew what he knew, keeping her involved in his life.

"Still not much luck with making many friends," he told the grave; even before Sakura died, neither she or her son were liked very much by other people her age or children her son's age. "I still have some in the single digits, but not above five."

But Shado didn't let the lack of friends get him down. He wanted his mother to know that he was adjusting to life…but still missed her everyday, every birthday, every Christmas, every Thanksgiving, Halloween, Mother's Day, everyday.

"Oh, we might have snow again like the last two years," he had nearly forgotten to inform her about the weather restoration that was like before Second Impact, and told her. "Everybody is looking forward to it."

A soft breeze swept past his neck and he pulled up his coat's zipper and replaced its hood.

"I look forward to seeing you again later," he expressed to his mother, getting up. "I love you."

As he walked away, he removed something from his travel bag. It was his winged panda plushy, not as aged as its owner was, but having had its wings re-sewn back onto its back last week. Even after all this time, he kept his first toy. Even after he got his first iPhone with which to take pictures, he had more sentimental value over the plushy than his other possessions.

Leaving the cemetery, Shado didn't notice that a young girl around his age, looking exactly like his mother had looked before she died, with large wings, was watching him. She had been watching him ever since he showed up and listened to every word he said to the grave. She gave a small smile to her son as he had been living a relatively good life. And then, as another breeze swept through the cemetery, she was gone. Gone…but not forgotten.

Fin


	7. Thoughts of the Grandparents

Creation began on 06-07-16

Creation ended on 06-09-16

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Different from You: Thoughts of the Grandparents

Gendo's thoughts

As he observed the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls printed out on his desk, Gendo couldn't stop thinking about his dead children and how he had failed them and disappointed his wife, whom he was now separated from because they wanted their grandson to have a better chance at a life that his mother had been denied. It had been nearly two months since the Third Angel had appeared…and during that time, he had visited Sakura's grave outside the city. He liked how hers stuck out among the forest of tombstones, as it gave her a sense of individuality and originality. More so than her brother's grave right next to hers, which was no different from the rest of the small pillars of black stone.

 _One dies of natural causes,_ he thought, _while the other dies of unnatural causes. And for what? Whatever was desired is now no longer worth everything that has happened. Even if Instrumentality were still possible, the result wouldn't be favorable for anyone. Only those still alive would be brought together…and whatever memories they had of the dead would be undone, like they never existed. Shinji and Sakura would be…faceless memories for the rest of existence. The little boy wouldn't remember his mother at all._

As he translated a piece of text, he found that, while everything was still the same the last time he had looked the scrolls over, he found that something had changed in one of the translations.

"' _And as the maimed heart of the Third's punisher falls from mortality, the messenger warns others to keep away for the season that is until the end of a fifth century'_?" He read, confused. "If this is even accurate, then…everything that was done…was for naught. Everyone that died, that suffered… I put my daughter through a trying ordeal, maybe even accelerated her death, and it didn't mean anything that would further anyone's goals."

He sat down and picked up the copy of the picture of his daughter and grandson. He sighed at what he felt was his fault for what had happened to Sakura. There wasn't a minute that went by without the feeling of shame and regret over his own actions towards his daughter. Not even the contempt his wife probably had for him because he had left her in the custody of her sister's family…and they were the ones that carried the ball of suffering he had set in motion.

 _It's still my fault, even if I never laid a hand on her,_ he thought, looking at Shado, who looked like his mother, who resembled her brother at such an early age in development. _I ignored her. I didn't spend time with her. I didn't even support her like I should have. If she had wanted an abortion when she was raped, I wouldn't have stopped her. I…I shouldn't have left her that day._

He decided to inform SEELE that it was likely the Angels wouldn't return for around four-five-hundred years, but it didn't change that he, among others by association, had aided in killing a girl that was too maimed, too broken to keep going on. They would be displeased, but they would also have blood on their hands, just as he did.

 _I hope you can forgive me, Sakura,_ he thought, leaving his office.

-x-

Yui's thoughts

As she put her grandson to bed for the night, Yui thought of the day her nephew, having reacted violently to the discovery that he and his parents would be incarcerated for the rest of their lives, was now on death row due to his attempt on Shado's life. She even got a call from her sister after she was transported to the women's correctional facility, just to hear her say that they were all cursed to sad endings because of her. But Yui didn't want to believe that, even though she had lost her children to sad endings, both subtly and violently. Her son and daughter were gone, but she wanted to believe in being redeemed for her role (or rather, her lack of attendance) in the death of her daughter who lived to be fourteen, twelve years older than her twin, by looking after her grandson.

" _What bright future is there for a dying girl after what her family did to her?!"_ She recalled her response to Fuyutsuki after he asked her about her agenda in the Eva program, just as returned to her room and sat at her desk to write in her diary about the day she had with Shado. _What bright future is there for anyone in our family?_

She looked at her copy of the picture of her daughter and grandson, wishing she had gotten to know Sakura better than the traumatic experiences and awful memories she had over the last ten years of her life that led to her end. While in the Eva, she observed her daughter from the role of a passenger or observer, and this included the memories and personal experiences. She couldn't even erase the day of her kidnapping and rape, or how her sister and brother-in-law wouldn't lift a finger to ensure her safe return or even help her put the trauma behind her; it was like everything she did, even just breathing the same air they did, was nothing more than a huge mistake they were trying to ignore or treat with the most unsavory of methods. And the last thing she saw her daughter experience before the synchronization between was severed by the Angel self-destructing…was of Mokuba climbing into her bed and telling her not to scream, otherwise she would receive another bruise from him.

 _And I don't know how she was able to endure all of that abuse the way she did,_ she thought; how Sakura's will allowed her to survive that long with such injuries and scars baffled her. _Some would say that women are superior to men, but even we have our limits. How were you able to go on for that many years and still manage to wake up to the next day?_

And this was something she couldn't find a scientific explanation for. There were always things that couldn't be explained under a microscope or through philosophical terms. She couldn't even be sure if her daughter's ability to endure all that pain was because she was a woman, not that such a status actually meant anything to her. There were just too many suggestions, too many questions and other possibilities raised by what happened.

Some people had even suggested studying Sakura's body to get a clearer understanding of how much abuse it could sustain, but Yui was against her daughter being studied; even if her body could no longer feel the passage of time, she didn't want her to suffer any more abuse, no matter what the reason.

 _Even the dead deserve the sanctity of eternal rest,_ she thought, deciding to turn in for the night. _Even the dead deserve eternal rest._

Fin

A/N: Well, that's what the thoughts of Gendo and Yui Ikari are like after the death of their children, and how they feel responsible for what happened.


End file.
